I wouldn't do it anyway, but my wife has warned me about wandering out there in my underwear to anxiously pick up the paper. She tells me the Frank Barone character on Everybody Loves Raymond has done something similar, taking the chance of the neighbors seeing him his underwear.
I wouldn't do it not so much that I don't want to be compared to Frank, but there are way too many people with cell phone cameras out there who could easily take delight in an "I gotcha moment."
I remember some guys at work many, many years ago who liked to drink quite a bit. They liked it so much that they bought a bar in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. This was in the '70s, when the area was a heavy working class neighborhood where many Poles lived, who somehow were frequently window washers. There was a saying then that the cleanest windows in all the boroughs could be found in Greenpoint.
I remember hearing one of their friends describe a visit to the bar to see how his co-workers were doing. They basically came back and said "Jeez, what a dump. And the neighborhood! I saw a guy bringing the trash down from the stoop in his underwear." The image never left me. That's why I first look at the paper online.
And today, first up, I was treated to an obit written by he NYT obit boss, the editor William McDonald on the passing of a sports legend, Joan Joyce, perhaps the most gifted female athlete who has now passed away at 81.
Joan's prowess was softball, and apparently she was one for the ages. When I read that she started in Waterbury, Connecticut I quickly thought that Bill McDonald might have seen her play, since I knew him to come from somewhere in Connecticut.
Yep, the gut was right. Bill's Twitter feed this morning makes reference the obit he wrote, and tells us he saw Joan Joyce pitch on many occasions. If you're a regular NYT obit reader you know that Richard Goldstein usually gets the byline on sport figure obits. But when the boss writes the obit, it's personal. Move over Dick, I got this one.
McDonald's writing about a famous sports figure made me think about the witnessing of great sport figures, or other memorable moments in history. My father would tell me he saw Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium sometimes throw out slow-poke runners on a single to right field when they couldn't beat his arm to first.
My father, born in 1915, would tell me of having the day off from school (taken or given, I don't remember) to go down to lower Broadway to witness the ticker tape parade for Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
I just read in an obit that Judge Demakos was there at Yankee stadium when Lou Gehrig ended his career with his "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech. There are events that you will remember for the rest of your life.
I'll narrow my memorable experiences to two sporting events. The first Ali-Frazier fight at MSG in 1971 when I had $20 seats in the last row of the Blue seats, attending with my father and a friend from work. I had gotten the three tickets in the mail when I read about the upcoming fight. No Ticketron surcharge either. I just wrote to MSG with a $60 check. I later read three people were so excited at the start of the fight that they had heart attacks.
The other was witnessing Secretariat win the 1973 Belmont stakes in still track record time and become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. My friend and I were at the track when the gates opened. We ran for the last section of seats that were not reserved in the clubhouse. We secured our claim to the seats with the then time-honored tradition of taping part of your newspaper to the seat. We did this so often when we went to the track that I used to carry a short pencil with a wad of masking tape spooled around it. My own tape dispenser. No that long ago I found that pencil with the now very dried out tape still attached.
If you've ever gone to Belmont you know that the sight lines stink. The stands are parallel to the racing surface, and if someone stands up anywhere to your left you're blocked from seeing the horses come down the stretch. Unless you stand on your seat.
Which is what my friend and I did as Secretariat was posting ungodly fractions on the telemeter and Turcotte took a peak at the board as he motored by. I still get goose pimples thinking about it. He was "a tremendous machine" that day.
I'm sure the passing of Joan Joyce flooded Bill's memories of growing up in Connecticut, much like when I think of that 1973 Belmont Stakes I think of the friend who is no longer with us, Fourstardave.
The Joan Joyce obit is a beaut. Better read online for the photos, but hopefully you still buy the print edition. The NYT may not need the money, but paper print is till my favorite medium. Just don't wander down the driveway to scoop it up in your skivvies. There are cameras everywhere these days.
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